A major anti-corruption operation was carried out in Kuban. The former mayor of Sochi, Alexey Kopaigorodsky, and his subordinates were detained. It seems that the officials of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism)’s main resort lived like oligarchs.
Who was detained during the special services operation?
Last night in Lugansk, Alexey Kopaigorodsky, the former mayor of Sochi, was detained. After his resignation, he volunteered for the SVO. Most likely, he ended up in the frontline zone for the same reasons as the lawyer Elman Pashayev and husband Elena Blinovsky— due to problems with law enforcement agencies. Kopaigorodsky has already been delivered to Moscow. A criminal case has been opened. Among the other defendants are former deputy mayor Oleg Burlev and the head of the city’s Khostinsky district Ivan Savin. Also, Kopaigorodsky’s wife was brought to the Investigative Committee for questioning. Anastasia GredinaSearches were conducted at everyone’s home and work.
According to the SHOT Telegram channel, former Sochi Mayor Alexey Kopaigorodsky is preliminarily suspected of embezzlement, creating an organized crime group, and selling cemetery plots. Earlier, former advisor to the Sochi Mayor Roman Pishchur was detained in the case of the so-called ritual organized crime group. He was arrested two months ago and sent to a pretrial detention center. According to investigators, Pishchur and his accomplices sold cemetery plots — prices ranged from 200 thousand to three million rubles. It is possible that the former mayor also participated in the fraud.
Alexey Kopaigorodsky may also be connected to the case of laundering 600 million rubles together with the former deputy head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations for Krasnodar Krai, Colonel Sergey Simonenko, who was detained in early August on suspicion of accepting a bribe and abuse of office.
In court it was revealed that the criminal case was opened under Part 4 of Article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism) (“embezzlement or misappropriation on an especially large scale”).
How the former mayor of Sochi lived
Alexey Kopaigorodsky governed Sochi for a very short time – from September 2019 to May of this year, then he resigned and went to the North-Eastern Military District. Previously, he worked in the administration of the Krasnodar Region, and for a couple of years as deputy governor.
As the mayor of Sochi, Kopaigorodsky went out to meetings with the population in a windbreaker and a down jacket, like from Loro Piana (over a million rubles), a bomber jacket and raincoat, like Brioni (650 thousand), and a jacket very similar to Canali (191 thousand). It would have been much cheaper to build a new staircase in the city center to Mount Battery to replace the old emergency one, because of which Sochi residents suffered for ten years.
Alexey Kopaigorodsky is an exemplary family man who is raising five children with his wife Anastasia Gredina. His father-in-law and mother-in-law look very rich. They just returned from Venice, before that they were on holiday in Bali, and celebrated the New Year in Courchevel.
The wife’s father is 61 years old Dmitry Gredin — a biker on an expensive Harley-Davidson motorcycle and a member of a motorcycle club. In the nineties, he was engaged in ensuring the operability of boiler houses in Krasnodar villages. Now he has a scattering of properties in Krasnodar, including a parking lot on Kalinina Street for 63 million rubles, shopping arcades nearby for 79 million rubles and five shopping centers under the single brand “Torgovy Kvartal Evroremont”, the most expensive of which costs 100 million rubles. We are talking only about the cadastral value, the market value can be several times higher.
The wife’s stepmother, 53-year-old Vladilena Gredina, a socialite, is constantly on the covers of Krasnodar glossy magazines. She has a lot of joint photos with celebrities on social networks, for example, with singer Mikhail Shufutinsky and politician Irina Khakamada. In the past, she was a dentist at a state clinic. Now a restaurateur, she owns the trademarks of the restaurant-museum “Stan”, the cafe chain “Dikanka” and the burger bar “Vakula” – all establishments serve Ukrainian dishes and are located in Krasnodar, one of them is right on the bank of the Kuban River with permission to use the water area. The mother-in-law manages this business through three LLCs – with a total income of over 411 million rubles.
The wife’s parents are also doing well with their apartments. The mother-in-law owns an apartment with a sea view in the Gelendzhik club house on Primorskaya Street, as well as spacious apartments in the Krasnodar business-class residential complex “Admiral” on Kubanskaya Embankment. The total cost is over one hundred million rubles.
The 39-year-old wife of the ex-mayor — Anastasia Gredina — is not far behind her father and stepmother in wealth. In Sochi, she has 20 acres of land on Kievskaya Street (probably for development). In Krasnodar, she uses a cottage on Kurskaya Street. She is also associated with two solid private houses in the village of Yelizavetinskaya and a couple of non-residential buildings in the Krinitsa gardening association. All this will amount to over 50 million rubles. But the most expensive asset, which is also associated with her, is a penthouse of 280 square meters and two basement rooms in the elite Talisman house on Kurortny Prospekt in Sochi.
Former mayor Alexey Kopaigorodsky seems like a poor relative against the backdrop of his wealthy relatives. He does not own any real estate, he uses his wife’s cottage, and earns much less than her, for example, in 2021, she received an income of over 37.5 million rubles, and he – 27 times less, only 1.4 million rubles.
The cars – a Land Rover SUV, Geely Monjaro and Hyundai Santa Fe crossovers – are also registered in the wife’s name.